Monday, March 22, 2010

Sunday, Georgia ING Half Marathon!

So yesterday was the long awaited and pain stakingly trained for day. Saturday I spent the whole day resting (with the exeption of going for a light walk in the sun) and drinking about 14 cups of freshly juiced OJ! For my dinner juice I deciede to experemint in creating a new green juice, and boy was it ever delicious! I did this in order to rest and cleanse my internal systems while still carbo loading for the race.

Salty, Sweet, and Sour Green Juice

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- 1 medium Pineapple

- 2 small Gala apples

- 2/3 stalk of Celery

- 1 medium Lime

- 4 leaves of Dinosaur Kale

I turned in around 9:30 that evening and depite my anxiety for the coming morning, was able to fall asleep rather quickly. However, I must have subconciously been paranoid that I would accidently oversleep and miss the race because after fallin asleep, I woke up periodically every hour with the overwhelming urge to check the time. LOL! My fears turned out to be unecessary, as my alarm clock went off precisely at 4:40 on Sunday morning.

After getting up I managed drink a quart of water, shower, get dressed in my racing clothes (with my racing bib firmly in place), and my gear bag packed in time to leave. Since it was early in the morning and the race was taking place in downtown Atlanta, where the roads incredibly difficult/dangerous to drive on if you are still a novice driver (like me!), my mom was kind enough to drive.

We departed and approximatly 5:30 (a little bit later than originally planned) and while my mom drove, I polished off the rest of my pre-race breakfast. I know some people advice against eating at all before a half marathon, but I've always experienced some serious blood sugar problems when ever I have tried to undergo intense exercise without atleast some form of fruit sugar in my system (e.g. shakes, weakness, and dizziness). So for breakfast I blended 4 ripe medium bananas with 4 medjool dates (no water) into a pudding. It was light enough that it wouldn't bog me down during the race and blended for easy digestion/quicker assimilation, while still giving me my much needed glucose energy.

We arrived at the race around 6:10 and parked in a parking garage about 1/4 of a mile from the ING racing area. The walk was a good warm up, and helped me manage my adrenaline jitters from my nerves. The ING racing area had a Gear Check tent, Information tent, Result tent, and plenty of porta potties (haha)! A little tip for any runners new to half marathons, always make sure to have plenty of time before the start of the race to wait in line to use the facilities because let me tell you, 18000 runners, most of them wanting to use the facilites at the same time as you do, equals long lines.

Needless to say I made it to the starting corrals just in the nick of time as the race started just a couple minutes later at exactly 7 o'clock.

My mom managed to take a couple of photos of me heading towards the starting line.

(My Bib number: 17437)

The whole race was so much better then I expected it to be. I started training for this half marathon mostly due to boredom. I wanted try something different so I could challenge myself. I just didn't expect this half marathon to be so much fun! I also didn't expect to preform as well as I did. Despite all my training, I still hadn't been able to run for more then 20 minutes before having to slow down to a fast paced walk to catch my breath. But on Sunday morning, as I broke into a run upon crossing the starting line I kept on running for 10 miles non-stop without any problem! The last three miles I only had to walk about a total of 5 minutes (mostly so I could rehydrate).

The hours and pavement just seemed to flow by, and before you know it the finish line was in sight! When it was over I actually cried a bit when it sunk in that I, Amanda Jane, had just completed a half marathon! A year or two ago if someone would have told me that I would have done this, I would have though they were nuts.

After finishing I met up with my mom before spliting up with her again so that I could head over to the results table to find out my clocked race time. Now I had estimated from my training that it would take me atleast 3 hours to finish the race, so you can imagine my suprise and utter delight to find out that I had run 13.1 miles at a clocked time of 2:25:55!!

On the drive back home I spent my time relaxing my sore legs and ankles while rehydrating with Penta water and eating the most sweet and juicy red delicious apple I have ever had in my life! :-) Once I arrived home I showered, got into my comfiest sweats, and plopped myself infront of the TV where I proceeded to watch Leave It to Beaver and Voyager episodes while consuming 2 large honeydew melons, a large smoothie (7 bananas + 4 dates), and a HUGE salad over the course of the day. Afterwards I crashed into bed at around 9:25 and was dead to the world for 10 hours straight.

This half marathon has given me a new passion that I am eager to continue. Running is my new addiction and I can't wait for my next half marathon. My goal is to keep running halfs until I can finish one with a clocked time of approx. 1:20:00 before trying to do a whole marathon.

This is a shout out to all you other runners out there, as well as anyone considereing taking up running! Running is amazing and our creator gave us brilliant legs to do it with, so don't waste those legs, GO RUN!! :-D

Just finished crossing the finished line.

Walking back to the car.

Note: I'll be posting more photos of the half marathon event, possibly with som video as well, as they become available through the Georgia ING Marathon website.